If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead

William Uricchio, a media history enthusiast and fellow intellectual (Director of MIT Comparitive Media Studies Program) to Henry Jenkins, author of Spreabable Media, writes an essay on the history of spreadable media, and he concludes with a great point:

 “Spreadability turns on the demands of publics, on processes of adaptation and localization, and on the construction of new meanings. The protocols and controls imagined by institutions, whether the state or religious authorities or the heavy industry of media, have historically had little impact on populations eager to share experiences and to modify them in their own ways. The spread of media and textual forms—whether to once-excluded social groups or to markets originally unimagined by media producers—owes as much to the interests and creativity of those outside constituencies as to the original producers.”

In my own words: as we can see that spreadable media “turns” on the public and social constructions of media environments, we may begin to realize that there are so many formats within media that can produce revolutionary meaning in our digital culture today. We, the creative people, make up parts these “authorities” and “institutions”–we have ultimate control over the inputs and outputs of media and it is important to recognize that. If we continue to manipulate the forces that attempt to hijack new media projects, we will successfully impose our own “imaginary” protocols upon the authorities of intellectual and creative property. We must keep the voice alive, must keep going viral, keep sharing, reblogging, reposting, retweeting because…if it doesn’t spread, it’s dead!